Horizontal gradient of polynomial functions for the standard Engel structure on \(\mathbb R^4\) (Q5963664)

The authors investigate the set \(V_f\) of horizontal critical points of a polynomial function \(f\in \mathbb{R}[x]\). They study the generic properties of the dimension of \(V_f\) (Theorem 3.1) and the trajectories of the horizontal gradient (Theorem 4.1 and Theorem 5.1). Other authors paper directly connected to this topic is [\textit{S. T. Dinh} et al., Ann. Inst. Fourier 59, No. 5, 1999--2042 (2009; Zbl 1197.14058)] (with P. Orro), and of [\textit{K. Kurdyka} et al., J. Differ. Geom. 56, No. 1, 67--92 (2000; Zbl 1067.58031)] (with P. Orro and S. Simon).